Called back to the family restaurant—Vanucci’s—sabotage and betrayal welcome the handsome and charming Alfonso home. Companionship wasn’t part of the plan, and love was an impossibility. But, Alfonso’s heart is smarter than his head when it comes to what he needs in life, and what he needs is Michael. Now, his greatest challenge is that of new love… one that demands he come out to his family. At only eighteen years old with a mom barely older than him, Michael Chellum knows a runner when he sees one. He’s lived with one all his life—and Alfonso Vanucci is a runner. Giving Alfonso his heart is a heartbreak waiting to happen. But, Michael’s mother is missing, and Michael’s on his own. He must learn to let others in and trust them with his vulnerabilities… or risk becoming an island of one, alone in the world without anyone to catch him if he falls. Alfonso never meant to fall in love with Michael, and Michael never meant to let himself rely on Alfonso. But, together, through reinvention, hard work, and love, Alfonso and Michael fight to save Vanucci’s and each other. To fail would mean losing everything…. This is a 67,000 word, M/M novel with a happily ever after. It includes genuine romance and explicit sex between two men.

    Easy-to-find answers to the most common (and obscure but fascinating) baseball questions." - USA Today"A great starting point for newbies of the game." - Ron Kaplan, "501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read Before They Die""Surprisingly, there is no other book so comprehensive, concise or readable." - St. Paul Pioneer-Press"Instructive and fun." - Chicago Sun-Times**Selected for the Baseball Hall of Fame Bookstore in Cooperstown**Lose yourself in all the marvelous memories and hallowed history of America’s national pastime with "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition." From the gloveless pioneers of the 1840s to the strife-ridden headlines of the 2000s, this comprehensive reference offers nearly 700 important baseball yarns, stats, and stories—cross-referenced and hyperlinked—in a style as lively as the game itself. Incredibly thorough, never dull, the book answers these and countless other questions:- Who was Ray Chapman, and why is he important?- Did Abner Doubleday really invent baseball?- What is sabermetrics?- Who set off the Pine Tar Incident?- Where was the first organized baseball game?- Were the Cubs cursed by a billy goat?- What are waivers and options?Written by SABR member and former college baseball broadcaster David H. Martinez and even selected as required reading for a college course on baseball history, "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition" puts over a century and a half of legends and lore, right in your mitt. It will settle arguments and provoke them, answer questions and ask them. It’s a must for veteran baseball fans—and a perfect way to get up to speed on baseball history for newcomers.

    The new edition from Chopra includes many topics encompassing the theory of structural dynamics and the application of this theory regarding earthquake analysis, response, and design of structures. No prior knowledge of structural dynamics is assumed and the manner of presentation is sufficiently detailed and integrated, to make the book suitable for self-study by students and professional engineers.

    Bodyguards don’t mix with romance, so I’ve been married to my job for the past few years. But when that job lands me in a cabin guarding a man named Taylor, things aren’t so clear cut. I’ve always been straight, but something’s drawing me to him, and the more we’re together the less I want to fight it.He’s testifying in a huge case, and if he wants to make it to the stand, I’ve got to keep him safe. That means keeping my distance—and keeping my feelings in check. Special Forces trained me to fight, but Taylor needs more than just a soldier.TAYLOR:Working in IT isn’t usually high stakes, but when a mercenary group starts hunting me down, I’m forced to seek protection from a bodyguard. I’m testifying before Congress, and I need Jack’s help to make it there in one piece. We can’t cross the professional line or Jack may end up becoming a lethal distraction.With a steely face and a soft heart under a tough shell, I can’t keep my mind off him—especially when we’re trapped together. But these killers are hellbent, and Jack needs a clear head if he’s going to protect me. The last place I should be is by his side, but that’s the only place I feel safe.This is a standalone MM romance.

    In 2003, her husband Chuck died of an apparent stroke. Only a month later, she married Chaz Higgs, an ER nurse who, it was later revealed, had attended to her late husband just before his death. Three years later, fifty-year-old Kathy died after a heart attack—the result, her family and friends believed, of a stressful political campaign. But when an autopsy of Kathy’s body revealed no signs of heart disease, investigators dug deeper into Kathy’s case…only to find the presence of a powerful, paralyzing emergency-room drug in Kathy’s system. A jury would later charge Nurse Chaz with murder in the first degree. But could Kathy’s first husband also have been the victim of Chaz’s treachery? And just how much did Kathy know? This is the shocking true story of a family torn apart by lies, medical crime, and POISONED LOVE.

    She’s too busy running her mother’s diner and raising her wild teenage sister. She doesn’t like to dwell on the dreams she once had, dreams she put on hold. Then Owen Miller walks into her diner and changes her life.She doesn’t know what to think when Owen hands her a letter from her father—a father she thought was dead—requesting they meet. As if that wasn’t enough, her sister has become more than she can handle. It’s time for Willa to figure out what’s happened to her life. And maybe, with Owen around, she can finally believe in happily ever after…Originally published in 2005.

    Brody wants love and family, but Micah refuses to say the L word. When the guys try to reconnect at a baseball game Micah is mistakenly singled out by the Kiss Cam. He finds himself in a passionate lip lock with the gorgeous redhead sitting beside him and instantly knows things will never be the same. If Nena can be the one to bridge the gap between Micah and Brody, they have a chance at forever. Nena cannot believe her life has gone from stale to spectacular in one amazing kiss. Suddenly the girl with the extra curves has the attention of not one, but two, totally hot men. Micah and Brody don’t just rock her world. They change the way Nena views the woman in the mirror. If only she could convince her overprotective brothers that unconventional or not, this is the life she wants more than anything else.

    In the past, discoveries often had to wait for the rise of the next generation to see questions in a new light and let go of old truisms. Today, in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new ones. In this spirit, John Brockman, publisher of the online salon Edge.org ("the world's smartest website"—The Guardian), asked 175 of the world's most influential scientists, economists, artists, and philosophers: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?Jared Diamond explores the diverse ways that new ideas emerge * Nassim Nicholas Taleb takes down the standard deviation * Richard Thaler and novelist Ian McEwan reveal the usefulness of "bad" ideas * Steven Pinker dismantles the working theory of human behavior * Richard Dawkins renounces essentialism * Sherry Turkle reevaluates our expectations of artificial intelligence * Physicist Andrei Linde suggests that our universe and its laws may not be as unique as we think * Martin Rees explains why scientific understanding is a limitless goal * Alan Guth rethinks the origins of the universe * Sam Harris argues that our definition of science is too narrow * Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek disputes the division between mind and matter * Lawrence Krauss challenges the notion that the laws of physics were preordained * plus contributions from Daniel Goleman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nicholas Carr, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Matt Ridley, Stewart Brand, Sean Carroll, Daniel C. Dennett, Helen Fisher, Douglas Rushkoff, Lee Smolin, Kevin Kelly, Freeman Dyson, and others.

    . .Italian LessonsFresh out of college, Carter Quinn has returned to his home in North Providence, Rhode Island, unsure of just about everything except his plans to go to Italy and pursue the woman of his dreams. To do that, he needs to learn to speak Italian, and only one man is right for the job--Giancarlo Rosa. . .if Carter can survive him.Giancarlo is nobody's fool. The middle-aged music professor does offer Italian lessons, but only to those who are truly motivated. If Carter wants to learn, he will have to prove himself: lessons three times a week, hours of studying, strict discipline. And there will be no questions about the professor's life--why he hasn't written music in years, why he lives alone, and why he left his homeland in the first place. Carter may see Italy as a land of romance, but Giancarlo knows just what disappointments and betrayals live under the Abruzzo sky. What begins as an apparent mismatch between mentor and student soon blossoms into something deeper--a friendship that carries them into the old country, where forgotten secrets may hold the key to a new lease on life.Now, in a land of sun, wine, new romance and old wounds, two men will embark on separate, unpredictable journeys that will take them deep into the untraveled places of the heart where everything must be learned. . .Praise for the Novels of Peter PezzelliFrancesca's Kitchen"Home cooking, good pasta and traditional family values conquer all in this amusing and touching story." --Publishers Weekly"Filled with warmth and humor, Pezzelli's latest novel entices. Readers won't want to put down this richly detailed novel." --Romantic TimesEvery Sunday"A sweet, brave, and funny novel--with a heart as big as the entire state of Rhode Island." --Claire Cook, author of Must Love DogsHome To ItalyA BookSense Pick! "A beautiful novel. . .Peter Pezzelli captures the warmth of Italy--family, friendships, and food--invites us into the world of his wonderful characters, and takes us full circle on a journey of life and love." --Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author"Bighearted and wise, Home to Italy is a charming ode to the romance of new beginnings and the Italian gusto for life."--Louisa Ermelino, author of Joey Dee Gets Wise"A warmhearted novel, perfect for an autumn evening in front of the fire." --Litchfield Enquirer

    She explains ideas at the cutting-edge of scientific enquiry, making them comprehensible and accessible to the layperson.

    This entirely new diary is composed in a similar style to the Country Diary, with Edith Holden's thoughts, anecdotes, and writings interspersed with poetry, mottoes, and her exquisite watercolor paintings of flowers, plants, birds, butterflies and landscape scenes.

    Individually, Jake Adam York’s poems are elegies for individuals; collectively, they consider the violence of a racist culture and the determination to resist that racism. York follows Sun Ra, a Birmingham jazz musician whose response to racial violence was to secede from planet Earth, considers the testimony in the trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant for the murder of Emmet Till in 1955, and recreates events of Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Throughout the collection, an invasion of starlings images the racial hatred and bloodshed. While the 1950s spawned violence, the movement in the early 1960s transformed the language of brutality and turned the violence against the violent, says York. So, the starlings, first produced by violence, become instruments of resistance.York’s collection responds to and participates in recent movements to find and punish the perpetrators of the crimes that defined the civil rights movement. A Murmuration of Starlings participates in the search for justice, satisfaction, and closure.

    It is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a young geographer's road trip through the underworld of U.S. military and C.I.A. ?black ops? sites. This is a shadow nation of state secrets: clandestine military bases, ultra-secret black sites, classified factories, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies making up what defense and intelligence insiders themselves call the ?black world.? Run by an amorphous group of government agencies and private companies, this empire's ever expanding budget dwarfs that of many good sized countries, yet it denies its own existence. Author Trevor Paglen is a scholar in geography, an artist, and a provocateur. His research into areas that officially don?t exist leads him on a globe-trotting investigation into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled black empire?the unmarked blank areas whether you are looking at Google Earth or a U.S. Geological Survey map. Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out the Groom Lake covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, observes classified spacecraft in the night sky with amateur astronomers, and dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar black budget. Traveling to the Middle East, Central America, and even around our nation's capital and its surrounding suburbs, he interviews the people who live on the edges of these blank spots. Paglen visits the widow of Walter Kazra, who, while working construction at Groom Lake, was poisoned by the toxic garbage pits there. The U. S. Air Force defense to his estate's suit? The base does not exist. The U. S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, Washington D. C. suburbs, secret prisons in Kabul, buried CIA aircraft in Honduras, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless?and eye-opening. This is a human, vivid, and telling portrait of a ballooning national mistake.

    Her face is perhaps as well known today as ever it was during her lifetime. And this fall, interest in Marilyn is at an all-time high for, on the 27th and 28th of October, the renowned auction house Christie's will place on sale many hundreds of objects that once belonged to the beloved actress. This specially designed hardcover book features more than 1,500 objects for sale, illustrated with hundreds of beautiful photographs as well as rare and never-before-seen archival photographs of Marilyn Monroe. Personal essays and fashion notes provide a behind-the-scenes look into the life of the world's most famous celebrity.

    It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of reference, in particular of naming, and of identity. From a critique of the dominant tendency to assimilate names to descriptions and more generally to treat their reference as a function of their Fregean sense, surprisingly deep and widespread consequences may be drawn. The largely discredited distinction between accidental and essential properties, both of individual things (including people) and of kinds of things, is revived. So is a consequent view of science as what seeks out the essences of natural kinds. Traditional objections to such views are dealt with by sharpening distinctions between epistemic and metaphysical necessity; in particular by the startling admission of necessary a posteriori truths. From these, in particular from identity statements using rigid designators whether of things or of kinds, further remarkable consequences are drawn for the natures of things, of people, and of kinds; strong objections follow, for example to identity versions of materialism as a theory of the mind.This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here published with a substantial new Preface by the author.